Funding forensics

OVER the years, Britain's Forensic Science Service has played a crucial role in solving countless cases, bringing rapists, murderers and thousands of lesser criminals to justice while also ensuring that the innocent are exonerated.

It was the FSS that pioneered the use of DNA profiling in criminal investigations and set up the world's first national criminal-intelligence DNA database and it has been a badge of honour for Yorkshire that, for many years, the FSS has had a base in Wetherby. Yet now it seems that leaner economic times have caught up with forensic science.

The FSS is to be run down, with the gradual loss of 1,600 jobs, because – according to the Government – it has become an economic impossibility for it to continue. The service has been losing 2m-a-month, says Crime Reduction Minister James Brokenshire, and next month is due to run out of money entirely.

The harsh facts are that, as police forces come under ever greater pressure to make economies, they are cutting back on forensics services, including both the state provider and private operators. And, while economies that allow frontline policing to continue are to be welcomed, certain questions have to be asked.

After all, it is one thing for forces to pool resources sensibly when buying in outside services, but quite another for them to skimp on a service such as forensics which has performed such a vital role in so many criminal investigations.

The Home Office and the police service need to make it clear what exactly is going on.